This is an old order livestock wagon. It’s probably a Schwartzentruber man who is driving, because the wagon is old-order green, and the wheels are made of unpadded iron. Schwartzentrubers wouldn’t use rubber padded wheels. It would be too modern. The cow in the wagon is on the way to the Mt. Hope livestock auction. …

Could it get any more iconic than this? The little house to the left of the big house is a Daadihaus, built for the grandparents. There are no retirement centers in Holmes County’s Amish country. Grandparents retire to their own custom home and live out their lives on the farm that they once owned. Would …

Here is an Amish man working a field with a team of six horses, pulling a rig that includes both a plow and a harrow. He is standing on top of the complicated platform, and it proves that Amish life and farming, though often plain, are not always simple.

Here is an Amish family on their way home from the market in Mt. Hope, Ohio. They are all dressed in black – father, mother and two little children. Rather different, wouldn’t you say? The lifestyle is difficult to imagine, I admit, even though I’ve been writing about it for over fifteen years with my …

Young Amish boys are expected to help out around the farm. So too are the girls. Here is a fellow who can’t be much older than ten, dragging a harrow over the soil. If I know Amish boys, this one thinks it’s fun to run a team like this.

In my last post, I showed you the simple type of plow that we typically see here in Ohio. Now here is a bigger rig. Interesting, don’t you think? There is a wide range of farming practices among the Amish.

Here is an Amish fellow who is doing it the hard, old-fashioned way, walking behind his plow rather than riding. It takes a strong man to wrangle the plow to cut a straight row, and he seems to be doing a fine job of it. That’s a beautiful team of three horses, and if you …

On a spring afternoon like yesterday, it is fun to see the kids walking home from their Amish parochial schools. These three girls each had a modern plastic lunch pail, and they didn’t seem to be in any particular hurry to get home to chores. There are enough Amish parochial schools in this part of …

I have loved this image of Amish school girls on a swing from the moment I captured it a few years ago. Can you remember swinging at recess? Did you ever swing with such careless abandon? These little Amish girls were pumping the swing with everything they had. I think it is the very definition …